Please Mr. Kennedy is the fourth song to be presented here from the Inside Llewyn Davis soundtrack. In the scene below, Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is roped into performing on a recording session with fellow folksingers played by Justin Timberlake and Adam Driver. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association calls it an original song, but Please Mr. Kennedy is part of a long folk tradition of borrowing and rewriting. It was not an original song in the eyes of the Academy’s Music Branch. The songwriting credits listed on its Globe nomination was Ed Rush, George Cromarty, T Bone Burnett, Justin Timberlake, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen.
Rush and the late Cromarty were a folk duo called the Goldcoast Singers, who in 1961 recorded a song called Please Mr. Kennedy that was about not wanting to go to Vietnam. The Llewyn Davis version takes the Goldcoast Singers version, changes the subject matter and the lyrics, and fiddles with the arrangement and the melody – but it’s clearly based on the earlier song. Having said that, I still love what they have done in the Llewyn Davis version. This scene a masterpiece of editing – the cuts really build the excitement of performing the song. The scene would be fun no matter what, but the way it’s cut really makes it worth watching again and again.
10…9…8…7.6.5…4…3…2…
One second please!
[Chorus]
Please Mr. Kennedy (Uh oh!)
I don’t wanna go (please don’t shoot me into outer space)
P-P-Please Mr. Kennedy (Uh oh!)
I don’t wanna go (please don’t shoot me into outer space)
[Verse 1]
I sweat when they stuff me in the pressure suits
Bubble helmet, Flash Gordon boots
Nowhere up there in gravity zero (outer…space)
I need to breathe, don’t need to be a hero (outer…space)
Are you reading me loud and clear?
Oh!
[Verse 2]
I’m six-foot two, and so perhaps you’ll
Tell me how to fit into a five foot capsule
I won’t be known as man of the century
If I burn up upon reentry
Gotta red-blooded wife with a healthy libido (outer…space)
You’ll lose her vote if you make her a widow (outer…space)
And who’ll play catch out in the back with our kid?
Oh!
Funny thing about music: When you intentionally write something that lacks substance, you run the risk of writing something catchy. We like to think we’re creatures that crave meaning. In reality, some of the best music connects on a purely textural level–It means nothing to our conscious minds…That’s where the subconscious mind takes over…The subconscious has questionable musical taste, but it sure knows how to have fun. I like this song. It’s fun and doesn’t demand too much of me. There are many songs that connect in a similar way. It’s not a stretch to call Please Mr. Kennedy one of the highlights of the movie – and a song that might not be so bad it’s good, but it is certainly so bad-good it’s entertaining.
“It is supposed to be a bad song according to Llewyn Davis,” Burnett said at the Q&A following a recent Wrap screening of the film. “The thing is, if you put music in a movie, it has to be good, even if it’s [supposed to be] bad.
“If a character says that the music is bad, then the audience will go along with it and be happy to be in on the joke. But if you just play bad music, the movie’s just bad for the amount of time that that music’s playing.”
References:
1. How a Song About Custer Morphed Into ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’ Globe Nominee ‘Please Mr. Kennedy’ – The Wrap
“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand
Observation Blogger 
I’m laughing…really cool..
You seen the movie Tom? Check this video snippet from the movie which is about the best ever film put to music (vice versa) I have seen:
I haven’t seen it, but I have to now. Love what I’ve seen so far. That cat is very cool.
As the Coen Brothers said they have given Llewyn lots of crosses to bear.
This is a great scene from a great film. The only thing I didn’t like about it was the cat sub plot. Being a major cat lover, I felt sorry for the cat the entire time, and was constantly on edge that something bad would happen to it. I was crushed when the cat escaped on that dark, icy road near the end.
If it helps, I wrote a lengthy article about the ‘cat’ representation in the movie here:
‘The sharper and much more confronting dual meaning of the cats is that they correspond to the two babies he intent on having aborted. Llewyn ended up with these two cats without any intention of keeping them, just like the two babies. One cat got away (like his first baby that is now 2 years old) and the other got wounded and probably killed by his car (analogous to his second baby which we presume was aborted). The wounding of the second cat occurs just after he passes the highway exit to the city where his first child resides. This isn’t a coincidence.’
That’s interesting about your father. If you are curious and familiar with the early 60’s Greenwich village, NY scene (Dylan, Baez etc) then you might like ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’. If not, you could find it like Llewyn does – a hard slog.
I’m afraid I didn’t like Maestro much, although I love classical music, especially Mozart. Bradley Cooper somehow gets on my nerves. I liked the first half of ‘A Star is Born’.
I thought Carey Mulligan was excellent in Maestro. If you liked ‘Maestro’, you must see ‘Tár’ with Cate Blanchett!
Oh I see. I can understand why it might not resonate with people because it might be construed as cold or sterile. But I found it engrossing: ‘To my mind Tár also sits in the centre, but of a triangular prism with movie spokes of ‘Kubrick, Tarkovsky and Bergman’ because there is a linear structure to the madness. As a movie aficionado I was enthralled watching this prism bend and warp in Tár.’